As the social media universe continues to expand and evolve, it's more important than ever to conduct an analysis of:

• Who you are trying to reach
  
• Your purpose for connecting to those people via social media
  

During this Analysis phase, we may find that the traditional methods of asking our audience what they'd like most to hear from us won't work because our audience isn't quite talking to us.  Fortunately, there are several other tools that can help us identify the key words that will help search engines such as Google or Bing to connect people looking for our services to our online presence.

As we start to Design our strategy, it becomes vital to consider where we're going to be focusing our efforts.  Rather than select a social media platform because it's the coolest new thing (we've done that), we need to determine what we plan to contribute to the social media conversation, and select the best platform to support that.

LinkedIn remains the go-to platform for professional development and networking.

Even though it ranks low on daily usage, its power is in its impact on search results.  LinkedIn is the social network MOST often appearing at the top of Google search results.

But your profile won't appear on search results unless you optimize it by using as many of the LinkedIn fields and options available to you, taking care to include those keywords that you've identified in your analysis. Remember: you're about to undertake a significant effort to communicate to a vast audience of strangers.  But even the most well-crafted post or stunningly shot videos won't matter if not one member of that vast audience has a means to find you.

That said: bios are static.  The social media network is moving, liquid, incessantly chattering, looking for the person who is on the cutting edge, or the stalwart who has mastered the best practices.  Once you're set up in LinkedIn, you'll need to engage with others on the platform.  Going to them will be more impactful than waiting for them to come to you.  You can do that by participating in Groups which, though a bit difficult to find, can come with significant exposure.

The 2 billion+ user gorilla in the social media universe, Facebook's value is not in search engine results, but daily activity.  This is where people go to share daily, sometimes hourly.  If your audience is following you here, you've got a better chance of reaching them with the latest news.

You'll want to decide where to invest your time.  Do you want to develop a community where your audience will feel more comfortable sharing their ideas and carefully crafted opinions?  Or do you want to develop a business profile where the focus is more on brand development?  Both have their pros and cons, as does implementing a combination of both.

We delve into these subjects with a bit more detail in our Summer Social Series.  Chapter Members can find session summaries and recordings here:  https://www.atdoc.org/SSS-2017-RR